Tuesday, March 14, 2017

1979 Winner, The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum

Directed by:Volker Schlöndorff

Distributor:United Artists/World
Pictures

Released:May 1979

Country:West Germany

Allegorical stories are okay by me as long as
the underlying story stands on its own and makes sense.If the Letter A on a dress or a talking pig
stand for something beyond their literal meaning, then fine, as long as I can
understand them as the Letter A or a talking pig.The problem comes when the viewer needs a
decoder ring or some sort of handbook with him to tell him what the symbolic meaning
of whatever the allegory is.The Wizard
of Oz doesn’t have to be about bimetallism or 19th century American politics in
order to be enjoyed.

Then there’s The Tin Drum.Here are a few things we have going on here:

Let me back up a step.The Tin Drum is a story told by Oskar
himself, starting with the sordid
conception of his mother in Western
Poland.Oskar’s mother can’t make up her
mind who she wants to be with following World War I, Alfred the German cook or her
cousin Jan the Polish postal worker, so she marries Alfred and carries on with
Jan.Oskar comes along and on his third
birthday, he gets as a present—you guessed it—a tin drum.The title drum in hand, and with his family
squabbling over whether it is better to remain Polish or embrace the new
National Socialism sweeping the country next door, Oskar decides that falling
down the stairs will allow him to stop from growing up and having to deal with
life.

Oskar in super-creepy mode

The Swiss actor playing Oskar, David Bennett,
plays the role with total creepiness.Oskar seems sort of reasonable as he narrates the film, but when you see
that look on his face when he screams, you just want to look away.Oskar’s story is not a straight path—he tells
about his two dads, his weird mother Agnes who eats raw fish likes it's M&Ms, and a dwarf in the circus with whom he strikes up a long-term
friendship.All of this is going on as
the Nazis are gaining power in Germany.

World War II breaks out, further underscoring
the differences between Jan and Alfred.At some point we are introduced to 16-year-old Maria, who is hired to
work at Alfred’s shop.She’s a pretty
thing, and not all that choosy with whose company she shares.Sometime later, she'll have her own weird kid,
and like Oskar, he will never be sure who the father is.The suspects?Alfred, who must be in his 50’s by then, or Oskar, who, of course, is
3.Yes, this was quite the controversial
movie.

Maria: She's not too picky

Now for the allegory part.I guess one could watch this and say Oskar’s
age stands for something,
and the nationalities of Oskar’s fathers stand for
something, and of course, “the tin drum” stands for something.By the end of the movie, really couldn’t have
cared less about that.I didn’t like
Oskar, I didn’t like his fathers, I didn’t like his friends, and I certainly
didn’t care for the Nazis.(As for
Maria, I thought, if I had been there, I bet I would have a shot with
her.)I didn’t really care whether Oskar
would ever age again or whether he’d ever beat his serious addiction to getting
another and another new tin drum.All I
knew was that other smarter people than me were somehow in the know and “got”
all of the meaning in this highly acclaimed movie.And that I didn’t.

The
Title:Die
Blechtrommel, in German.The title
is the same as the 1959 Günter Grass
novel upon which this film was based.My
bet is that I wouldn’t have understood the book any more than I did the film.

Representation of heartless industry, or just a Tin Man?

The
Culture:As with so many Best Foreign Film winners, we get a look at pre-war Europe, this time
western Poland.One theme showing upthese pre-war films is the terrible uncertainty people felt at the time.The choice always seems to be: Go with the
Nazis and make the best of it, or oppose the Nazis and expect the worst.It is, of course, easy to judge in
retrospect, but it must have been a difficult thing to grapple with for so many
(non-Jewish) families in Europe.

Agenda
danger:If I had understood all the symbols in this
thing, I may have been wearied by the message.I sensed an anti-nationalism coming from Oskar’s unhappiness at having
been raised by two men who represented two political views and countries of
origin.But as usual, the Nazis who are the bad guys, and who can object to that?

Best
Picture that year:Kramer
vs. Kramer.

Rating:The Tin
Drum won a bunch of awards and made a ton of money, so who am I to say it’s
no good?I will say that I laughed a few
times, though I’m not too sure I was supposed to.In the end, it made me ask myself this
philosophical question:Who is smarter: intellectuals
who watch movies like this and understand all the meanings, or the common folk
who avoid watching movies like this?